James Gurney

This daily weblog by Dinotopia creator James Gurney is for illustrators, plein-air painters, sketchers, comic artists, animators, art students, and writers. You'll find practical studio tips, insights into the making of the Dinotopia books, and first-hand reports from art schools and museums.

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Tuesday, July 19, 2011

(Part 1 of 2 above) The resulting filmed version of Hemingway’s “The Old Man and The Sea” is full of sensitive observations, aided by an evocative musical score and good sound design. It won the Academy Award in 1999.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66rB6k5Vab0&feature=related
(Part 2 of 2 above) Even though the dubbed track is in Japanese, the story of an old man catching a big fish is clear enough. Other forms of animation may have smoother action, but Petrov’s kinetic canvas conveys the brutal physical conflict of Hemingway’s story, as well as its stark poetry.

5 comments:

There's also a nice making of on Petrov's last animation short "my Love" on youtube, where you see how he establishes first a rough storyboard and then a drawn pencil-test:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncJuHjTb0R4&feature=related(in russian)What I find so fascinating about Petrov is that he translates the classical painting approach (and thus the same developping process: thumbnail sketches -> storyboard, charcoal studies -> pencil test...) into animation, adding time to a realist painting.Thanks, James! :-)

Wonderful work, thanks for introducing it to me. I wonder if Petrov was influenced by Frédéric Back. Back's 1987 Academy Award-winning short animated film, The Man Who Planted Trees, has a similar look and feel.

Gorgeous. This is mastery of a medium at its finest. Since even doing a pencil test is exhausting, the fact that each frame of this is painted is something that is utterly amazing. He must have worked on this for at least a year, at minimum a lot of months! Thanks!

If you're open to suggestions take a look at the classic "Man who planted trees" Part One - and follow the links to the other 3 parts. This version on Youtube is better than the complete one, which looks as if it's transferred from VHS. And soley because I had the VHS, this one too - "The Happy Prince" The music score is...delightful!